• Proceedings of the Korean Biophysical Society Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.37-37
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• 2003

We have shown the $Ca^{2+}$-activated chloride current is present in cardiac myocyte in rabbit pulmonary vein (Kim et al., 2002). This current amplitude was increased as [N $a^{+}$]$_{i}$ was increased and we suggested this chloride current may be involve in the spontaneous action potential frequency change. Since this current is activated by the increase of intracellular $Ca^{2+}$, we would like to test what is the inducer of the increase of [C $a^{2+}$]$_{i}$ between a L-type $Ca^{2+}$-current or a reverse mode of N $a^{+}$-C $a^{2+}$ exchange current. White rabbit (1.5 kg) was used and anesthetized with Ketamin (100 mg/kg). Pulmonary vein (PV) was isolated and sleeve area between left atrium and PV was dissected. Using collagenase (Worthington 0.7 mg/cc), single cardiac myocytes were isolated. In the presence of 15 mM of N $a^{＋}$, three steps of voltage pulses were applied (holding potential : -40 ㎷, -80 ㎷ for 50 msec, 30 ㎷ for 5 msec, 10 ㎷ steps from -70 ㎷ to 60 ㎷). The inward and outward tail current was activated after brief 5 msec prepulse. The outward tail current was blocked by the removal of extracellular chloride substituted by glucuronic acid or by a chloride channel blocker, 5 mM 9-AC. But the inward tail current was still remained even though the amplitude was decreased. The reversal potentials were changed to the direction of the change of chloride equilibrium potential ( $E_{Cl}$ ) but the shift of equilibrium potential was not enough to match to the theoretical equilibrium potential shift. In the presence of L-type $Ca^{2+}$ channel blocker, nifedipine 1 uM, inward tail currents were greatly reduced but the outward current tail currents were still remained. In the presence of N $a^{+}$-C $a^{2+}$ exchange current blocker, 10 uM KB-R7943, the inward and outward tail currents were blocked almost completely. We tried to test the $Ca^{2+}$sensitivity of the chloride current with various [C $a^{2+}$]$_{i}$ in pipette solution from 100 nM to 1 uM but we failed to activate $Ca^{2＋}$-activated chloride currents even though the cell became contracted in the presence of 1 uM $Ca^{2+}$. From these results, we could conclude that the increase of [C $a^{2+}$]$_{i}$ to activate the outward $Ca^{2+}$-activated chloride current was mainly induced by the activation of the reverse mode of N $a^{+}$-C $a^{2+}$ exchanger, But for the increase of [C $a^{2+}$]$_{i}$ to activate the inward tail current, L-type $Ca^{2+}$ current may be the major provoking current. Since the cytosolic increase of [C $a^{2+}$]$_{i}$ through pipette solution have failed to activate $Ca^{2+}$-activated chloride current, this chloride current may have very low $Ca^{2+}$ sensitivity or a comparmental increase $Ca^{2+}$ such as in subsarcolemmal space may activate the chloride current. Since there are several reports and models that the increase of $Ca^{2+}$ in subsarcolemmal space would be over several to tens of uM, both possibility may be valid together.uM, both possibility may be valid together.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 1974

The seed quality testing for Korean white pine (Pinus koraiensis), their pre-germination and embryo growing process were investigated and the abnormal embryo groups were discriminated by the use of soft X-ray photograph. The study results were as follows ; 1. The embryo reflection was clearly observed for air dried seeds (moisture content was 6.3%) at 30 sec, stratificated seeds at 60 sec (moisture content 24.0-36.0%) and immature seed (moisture content 41.0-64.0%) at 90sec., then the photographing variation for soft X-ray was the radiographing distance at 42cm focus M, voltage 19.5 K.V.P. and Ampere 8 mA. By the above result, the radiographing time for discriminating the embryo reflection was increased by the increase of moisture content in the seeds. 2. The embryo reflection could be clearly observed from the last ten days of June and the embryo length ratio to endosperm length was growing to 65% at the first ten days of September. By the result obtained the soft X-ray photograph was thought to be effective method for the study of inner morphology of seeds. 3. The clear reflection seeds for embryo and endorsperm were observed to 69.7% and the seeds were practically germinated to 75.2% The difference in number between the discriminated seeds by the soft X-ray photograph and the practically germinated seeds was only 6%. According to this results, the soft X-ray photograph was thought to be a effective methods for the germination diagnosis in the shortest time and with the exactness comparatively. 4. Because of the possibility of clearness for observation of pre-germination process, the soft X-ray photograph could be used for the study on the physiology of seed germination. 5. The frequency of abnormal embryos was observed of total 4.4% and their types and subtypes could be classified into twenty groups. Among these groups, single abnormal embryo type was divided into eight subtypes and observed of 2.0 percent, twin embryo was six subtypes and 1.8 percent, triple embryo was five subtypes and 0.5 percent, and inverse type was 0.12 percent.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.375-395
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• 2006

Purpose: Lingual nerve (LN) damage may be caused by either tumor resection or injury such as wisdom tooth extraction, Although autologous nerve graft is sometimes used to repair the damaged nerve, it has the disadvantage of necessity of another operation for nerve harvesting. Moreover, the results of nerve grafting is not satisfactory. The nerve growth factor (NGF) is well-known to play a critical role in peripheral nerve regeneration and its local delivery to the injured nerve has been continuously tried to enhance nerve regeneration. However, its application has limitations like repeated administration due to short half life of 30 minutes and an in vivo delivery model must allow for direct and local delivery. The aim of this study was to construct a well-functioning $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus for the ultimate development of improved method to promote peripheral nerve regeneration with enhanced and extended secretion of hNGF from the injured nerve by injecting $rhNGF-{\beta}$ gene directly into crush-injured LN in rat model. Materials and Methods: $hNGF-{\beta}$ gene was prepared from fetal brain cDNA library and cloned into E1/E3 deleted adenoviral vector which contains green fluorescence protein (GFP) gene as a reporter. After large scale production and purification of $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus, transfection efficiency and its expression at various cells (primary cultured Schwann cells, HEK293 cells, Schwann cell lines, NIH3T3 and CRH cells) were evaluated by fluorescent microscopy, RT-PCR, ELISA, immunocytochemistry. Furthermore, the function of rhNGF-beta, which was secreted from various cells infected with $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus, was evaluated using neuritogenesis of PC-12 cells. For in vivo evaluation of efficacy of $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus, the LNs of 8-week old rats were exposed and crush-injured with a small hemostat for 10 seconds. After the injury, $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus($2{\mu}l,\;1.5{\times}10^{11}pfu$) or saline was administered into the crushed site in the experimental (n=24) and the control group (n=24), respectively. Sham operation of another group of rats (n=9) was performed without administration of either saline or adenovirus. The taste recovery and the change of fungiform papilla were studied at 1, 2, 3 and 4 weeks. Each of the 6 animals was tested with different solutions (0.1M NaCl, 0.1M sucrose, 0.01M QHCl, or 0.01M HCl) by two-bottle test paradigm and the number of papilla was counted using SEM picture of tongue dorsum. LN was explored at the same interval as taste study and evaluated electro-physiologically (peak voltage and nerve conduction velocity) and histomorphometrically (axon count, myelin thickness). Results: The recombinant adenovirus vector carrying $rhNGF-{\beta}$ was constructed and confirmed by restriction endonuclease analysis and DNA sequence analysis. GFP expression was observed in 90% of $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus infected cells compared with uninfected cells. Total mRNA isolated from $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus infected cells showed strong RT-PCR band, however uninfected or LacZ recombinant adenovirus infected cells did not. NGF quantification by ELISA showed a maximal release of $18865.4{\pm}310.9pg/ml$ NGF at the 4th day and stably continued till 14 days by $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus infected Schwann cells. PC-12 cells exposed to media with $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus infected Schwann cell revealed at the same level of neurite-extension as the commercial NGF did. $rhNGF-{\beta}$ adenovirus injected experimental groups in comparison to the control group exhibited different taste preference ratio. Salty, sweet and sour taste preference ratio were significantly different after 2 weeks from the beginning of the experiment, which were similar to the sham group, but not to the control group.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.202-209
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• 2004

Flat panel based digital radiography (DR) systems have recently become useful and important in the field of diagnostic radiology. For DRs with amorphous silicon photosensors, CsI(TI) is normally used as the scintillator, which produces visible light corresponding to the absorbed radiation energy. The visible light photons are converted into electric signal in the amorphous silicon photodiodes which constitute a two dimensional array. In order to produce good quality images, detailed behaviors of DR detectors to radiation must be studied. The relationship between air exposure and the DR outputs has been investigated in many studies. But this relationship was investigated under the condition of the fixed tube voltage. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the DR outputs and X-ray in terms of the absorbed energy in the detector rather than the air exposure using SPEC-l8, an X-ray energy spectrum model. Measured exposure was compared with calculated exposure for obtaining the inherent filtration that is a important input variable of SPEC-l8. The absorbed energy in the detector was calculated using algorithm of calculating the absorbed energy in the material and pixel values of real images under various conditions was obtained. The characteristic curve was obtained using the relationship of two parameter and the results were verified using phantoms made of water and aluminum. The pixel values of the phantom image were estimated and compared with the characteristic curve under various conditions. It was found that the relationship between the DR outputs and the absorbed energy in the detector was almost linear. In a experiment using the phantoms, the estimated pixel values agreed with the characteristic curve, although the effect of scattered photons introduced some errors. However, effect of a scattered X-ray must be studied because it was not included in the calculation algorithm. The result of this study can provide useful information about a pre-processing of digital radiography.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.1-6
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• 2011

A transparent oxide thin film transistors (Transparent Oxide-TFT) have been fabricated by RF magnetron sputtering at room temperature using amorphous indium zinc oxide (a-IZO) as both of active channel and source/drain, gate electrodes and co-sputtered $HfO_2-Al_2O_3$ (HfAIO) as gate dielectric. In spite of its high dielectric constant > 20), $HfO_2$ has some drawbacks including high leakage current and rough surface morphologies originated from small energy band gap (5.31eV) and microcrystalline structure. In this work, the incorporation of $Al_2O_3$ into $HfO_2$ was obtained by co-sputtering of $HfO_2$ and $Al_2O_3$ without any intentional substrate heating and its structural and electrical properties were investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and spectroscopic ellipsometer (SE) analyses. The XRD studies confirmed that the microcrystalline structures of $HfO_2$ were transformed to amorphous structures of HfAIO. By AFM analysis, HfAIO films (0.490nm) were considerably smoother than $HfO_2$ films (2.979nm) due to their amorphous structure. The energy band gap ($E_g$) deduced by spectroscopic ellipsometer was increased from 5.17eV ($HfO_2$) to 5.42eV (HfAIO). The electrical performances of TFTs which are made of well-controlled active/electrode IZO materials and co-sputtered HfAIO dielectric material, exhibited a field effect mobility of more than $10cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, a threshold voltage of ~2 V, an $I_{on/off}$ ratio of > $10^5$, and a max on-current of > 2 mA.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.322-330
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• 2008

The properties of discharge, luminance, and spectroscopy are investigated in a longitudinal and transverse discharge fluorescent lamps with tube of outer diameter 4 mm. The sample lamps are prepared to be three kinds of gas composition such as mercury lamps of Ne(95%)+Ar(5%)+Hg(2 mg), the mercury-free lamps of Xe 100% and Ne+Xe(4%). The gas pressure is in the range of $5{\sim}300\;Torr$. In the mercury lamps, the longitudinal discharge having a positive column is high in luminance and efficiency, while the transverse discharge is no luminance at all. In the Xe-lamps, the transverse discharge shows relatively good in efficiency as compared with the longitudinal discharge which has a high discharge voltage and a low luminance and efficiency. In the transverse discharge of relatively high efficiency, a pure Xe(100%) gas discharge has a higher efficiency than the mixture gas of Ne+Xe(4%). Through these experiments, the properties of mercury and xenon lamps are verified. In the mercury lamps, the longitudinal discharge of tubular fluorescent lamps is high in luminance and efficiency, while the transverse discharge of flat panel fluorescent lamps are low in luminance efficiency. In the mercury-free lamps, the flat fluorescent lamps of transverse discharge having a high pressure ${\sim}100\;Torr$ with the pure Xe-gas are verified to be suggestable.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.1529-1535
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• 1999

This study was done for the extraction of carotenoid from Phaffia rhodozyma in combination with PEF and other methods. PEF treatment conditions were $30{\sim}80\;kV/cm,\;100{\sim}1000\;Hz\;and\;100{\sim}1000\;{\mu}s$. In order to increase permeability of yeast cell wall, various methods such as freezing-thawing, mechanical treatment, solvents, permeabilizing agents, and yeast cell wall lytic enzyme were used before PEF treatment. The combination of PEF $(50\;kV/cm,\;300\;Hz,\;1000\;{\mu}s)$ and conventional methods such as solvent and freezing-thawing pre-treatment had no effects on the extraction of carotenoid pigments. The extent of extracted carotenoid by the PEF $treatment(50\;kV/cm,\;300\;Hz,\;1000\;{\mu}s)$ combined with yeast cell wall lytic enzyme and mechanical pre-treatment increased 52% and 69.8% more than the sum of that by each treatment, respectively. Permeabilizing agents, especially Tween 20 and capric acid, enhanced the extraction efficiency of carotenoid pigments from P. rhodozyma cells. These results indicated the feasibility for the continuous extracting carotenoid pigments from P. rhodozyma by PEF combined with other permeabilizing methods.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.635-641
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• 2003

A non-thermal pasteurization technology, high Pulsed Electric Field (PEF) has been thought to be a new alternative processing technology instead of heating. The objective of this study was to examine and compare the effect of PEF and High Temperature Short Time (HTST) treatments on the physicochemical, microbiological and sensory characteristics of citrus juices. Total sugar and titratable acidity values of fresh citrus juice and two treatments were not significantly different each other at p<0.05. The concentration of vitamin C in fresh citrus juice $(31.2{\pm}0.59\;mg%)$ was not significantly different with the value of PEF treatment $(29.4{\pm}0.75\;mg%)$ but was significantly higher than the value of HTST treatment $(27.4{\pm}0.75\;mg%)$. The color values (L, a, and b) in PEF treatment were significantly lower than the fresh citrus juice, but were higher than the values of HTST treatment. Both total bacterial cell counts $(6.65\;{\pm}\;0.08\;log_{10}(cfu/mL))$ and yeast counts $(7.79{\pm}0.07\;log_{10}(cfu/mL))$ in fresh citrus juice were significantly reduced by PEF $(1.39{\pm}0.14,\;2.42{\pm}0.1\;log_{10}(cfu/mL))$ as well as HTST treatment (0, 0). PE activity of fresh citrus juice $(1.3{\pm}0.12\;units/mL)$ was significantly reduced by PEF treatment $(0.11{\pm}0.01\;units/mL)$ and was totally inactivated by HTST treatment. Sensory evaluation scores in flavor, taste and overall acceptability between the fresh and PEF treated citrus juices $(7.2{\sim}7.5)$ were not significantly different but the values of HTST treatment $(5.1{\sim}5.8)$ were lower than others. Consequently, PEF treatment is thought to be a good alternative pasteurization method for fresh citrus juice to HTST treatment due to its strong pasteurization effect, reduced destruction of nutrients and good sensory characteristics.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.754-762
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• 1995

Strontium titanate(SrTiO$_3$) thin film was prepared on Si substrates by RF magnetron sputtering for a high capacitance density required for the next generation of LSTs. The optimum deposition conditions for SrTiO$_3$thin film were investigated by controlling the deposition parameters. The crystallinity of films and the interface reactions between SrTO$_3$film and Si substrate were characterized by XRD and AES respectively. High quality films were obtained by using the mixed gas of Ar and $O_2$for sputtering. The films were deposited at various bias voltages to obtain the optimum conditions for a high quality file. The best crystallinity was obtained at film thickness of 300nm with the sputtering gas of Ar+20% $O_2$and the bias voltage of 100V. The barrier layer of Pt(100nm)/Ti(50nm) was very effective in avoiding the formation of SiO$_2$layer at the interface between SrTiO$_3$film and Si substrate. The capacitor with Au/SrTiO$_3$/Pt/Ti/SiO$_2$/Si structure was prepared to measure the electric and the dielectric properties. The highest capacitance and the lowest leakage current density were obtained by annealing at $600^{\circ}C$ for 2hrs. The typical specific capacitance was 6.4fF/$\textrm{cm}^2$, the relative dielectric constant was 217, and the leakage current density was about 2.0$\times$10$^{-8}$ A/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at the SrTiO$_3$film with the thickness of 300nm.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2006

Gap junction is an ion channel forming between adjacent cells. It also acts as a membrane channel like sodium or potassium channels in a single cell. The amino acid residues up to the $10^{th}$ position in the amino (N)-terminus of gap junction hemichannel affect gating polarity as well as current-voltage (I-V) relation. While wild-type Cx32 channel shows negative gating polarity and inwardly rectifying I-V relation, T8D channel in which threonine residue at $8^{th}$ position is replaced with negatively charged aspartate residue shows reverse gating polarity and linear I-V relation. It is still unclear whether these changes are resulted from the charge effect or the conformational change of the N-terminus. To clarify this issue, we made a mutant channel harboring cysteine residue at the $8^{th}$ position (T8C) and characterized its biophysical properties using substituted-cysteine accessibility method (SCAM). T8C channel shows negative gating polarity and inwardly rectifying I-V relation as wild-type channel does. This result indicates that the substitution of cysteine residue dose not perturb the original conformation of wild-type channel. To elucidate the charge effect two types of methaenthiosulfonate (MTS) reagents (negatively charged $MTSES^-$ and positively charged $MTSET^+$) were used. When $MTSES^-$ was applied, T8C channel behaved as T8D channel, showing positive gating polarity and linear I-V relation. This result indicates that the addition of a negative charge changes the biophysical properties of T8C channel. However, positively charged $MTSET^+$ maintained the main features of T8C channel as expected. It is likely that the addition of a charge by small MTS reagents does not distort the conformation of the N-terminus. Therefore, the opposite effects of $MTSES^-$ and $MTSETT^+$ on T8C channel suggest that the addition of a charge itself rather than the conformational change of the N-terminus changes gating polarity and I-V relation. Furthermore, the accessibility of MTS reagents to amino acid residues at the $8^{th}$ position supports the idea that the N-terminus of gap junction channel forms or lies in the aqueous pore.